


Prisoners

by Tanaqui



Category: Earth 2 (TV 1994)
Genre: Community: spook_me, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 17:19:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2515649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanaqui/pseuds/Tanaqui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the surface of G889, a group of prisoners hopes for rescue from the alien who has captured them. Written for <a href="http://spook-me.dreamwidth.org/">Spook Me</a> and the creature prompt "alien".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prisoners

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Scribbler for the beta.

A jolt of pain jerked me back to wakefulness. My hands automatically reached for the collar around my neck, seeking to tear it off before the pain came again, but I stopped them before I touched it. I already knew there was no way to unlock the wretched device. We had tried many times before, when they were first fitted, and the only result had been more pain.

A hideous cackle, accompanied by a second agonizing flash, signaled it had not been merely a moment's inattention that had caused my collar to fire, but the return of our tormentor. A quick glance in the direction of the cackle—though I was careful to keep my head bent, to avoid attracting more personal attention from the creature—confirmed it. He lounged against a tree: a hideous, dead-eyed, pale-fleshed monster, with a straggling mane of hair.

Did he always seem so repulsive? When he first came to us out of the sky, with the rest of his kind, and spoke soft words and made sweet promises—before he stole our land and our lives.

He made one of those harsh, croaking noises that seem to be his language. I did not understand the sound, but the gestures were clear enough. We scrambled to our feet and set off in the direction he pointed. We had been doing this for days now: he would go away for a while soon after the sun rose, and then return a little later and direct us to walk, always roughly the same way. From time to time, I would turn and look back over my shoulder, but the point where he had captured us, one by one, was far behind us now and the ground under our feet was strange and unyielding.

When the sun was two thirds of the way across the sky, he made us halt. Another low-pitched grunt and he mimed putting something into his mouth. We knew he wanted food and we made haste to search—before he decided one of us was good enough to eat in the absence of anything else.

I touched one of my fellow captives as I passed by him and we exchanged a look, but the collars that controlled us also made it impossible for us to speak to one another. Without speech, it had been too difficult to make any plan together that would allow us to escape; and whenever one of us had tried some ruse or other, the rest of us had been too slow to catch on before our captor had triggered our collars. The one time we had tried to rush him all at once had ended quickly and badly: the whole group of us writhing on the ground at his feet, while he shocked us again and again until several of us—myself included—passed out.

Our work done for today, we squatted on the ground in a circle as dusk began to fall. Our tormentor lounged a few feet away, busy stuffing his face with the nourishment we had found him and muttering incomprehensible words to himself. At least this evening he left us in peace for a few minutes while he did so—as much as there could be any kind of peace for us now. At other times, he seemed angry or simply bored and made us the outlet for his frustration or need for amusement.

As the light faded completely, he rolled himself in those strange robes he wore and slept. I felt a small measure of relief that our respite would continue for some while longer. 

In the faint starlight, I peered around at the others, counting. Still the six of us—if I included myself—who had first been captured all those weeks ago. I tried not to think about the seventh member of our group. Tried not to think that he might have been dead for days. Tried to hope that he was still out there, shadowing us and planning a rescue. But it was getting harder with each sunset to continue to believe rescue would come. 

Impossible to believe when, a day later, we saw him collared like the rest of us.

_Who will save us from this alien now?_

**Author's Note:**

> As Devon says near the end of the pilot episode: "Four days ago, aliens landed on a distant planet, and we are them."


End file.
